Captain Robert “One Eye” Charnock

Painted sometime before 1650 by an unknown artist, One Eye (as he was presumably known to his friends) fought on the royalist side during the war and reputedly lost an eye at the Siege of Lathom. Consequently his roguish gaze has nothing to do with his character and everything to do with his war service.

 

He is bareheaded (with a thin comb-over) in this portrait and is wearing a leather lined gorget around his throat over a brown doublet that is decorated with some kind of cord piping around his waist echoing an earlier fashion of decorated points that would originally have connected to the breeches. His falling band is decorated with a thin edging of bone lace and an understated set of strings. The picture hangs in the Astley Hall Museum, Chorley.

 

Richard Lovelace

The poet and soldier for the Crown, painted by John de Critz in college robes. Lovelace was educated at Oxford where he was granted the degree of Master of Arts. Despite being described in wikipedia as having fought for the King, it turns out that his military career was all on the continent and he was not involved in the Civil War at all. His most celebrated verses are  from his poem entitled “To Althea, From Prison”:

“Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage”

 

Richard is wearing his masters gown over what looks to be a doublet and waistcoat beneath, as there are definitely two layers, both heavily buttoned. On his head he wears a scholar’s square cap and a plain linen band around his neck.

 

 

 

The tassels on his band strings appear to be made of tiny knots, rather like an example in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 4.

 

 

In this detail you can see the intricate work on the buttons and also the embroidery on his glove cuffs.